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OverTheGeicoE writes "Over a month after Sen. Rand Paul announced his desire to pull the plug on TSA, he has finally released his legislation that he tweets will 'abolish the #TSA & establish a passengers "Bill of Rights."' Although the tweet sounds radical, the press release describing his proposed legislation is much less so. 'Abolition' really means privatization; one of Paul's proposals would simply force all screenings to be conducted by private screeners. The proposed changes in the 'passenger Bill of Rights' appear to involve slight modifications to existing screening methods at best. Many of his 'rights' are already guaranteed under current law, like the right to opt-out of body scanning. Others can only vaguely be described as rights, like 'expansion of canine screening.' Here's to the new boss..."

It still is. The laws that temporarily took guns away from pilots were misguidedly attempting to somehow keep us "safe"... from the very people we were trusting with our lives when we stepped on the plane in the first place.

What a boneheaded, f*ed up thing to do.

Fortunately, some politicians who had at least a few working brain cells left got that situation reversed, and explicitly made it legal (again) for pilots to carry guns.

That's tricky. Terrorists are looking for soft targets. If there's no security on aircraft, they'll attack aircraft. If their most 'dead americans per dollar' is in Iraq then they go to iraq, or afghanistan or whatever. Depends also on what metric they decide to use, and what they think will be successful.

In this day and age it's very unlikely they'd be able to take and keep possession of an airplane. That was a one trick pony, and they seriously under delivered. For probably another 20-30 years hijacking an airplane is simply not going to work for suicide bombing. Passengers will resist, improvise weapons or whatever. Blowing up an airplane... harder to say.

But they *are* looking for ways to kill people. And the TSA is terrible at their job. Those two aren't mutually inclusive or exclusive. You need security looking for bombs, and poison gas, you need to secure airports themselves against ground based lasers and rockets and so on (because god knows, if you can blind a pilot to crash a plane they'll try that). Ultimately security like this is an uninsurable problem, it has to be the government running it. The TSA acts like some lunatics crazy scheme that had no chance of success 7 years ago should dictate the experience for everyone flying today - that's fundamentally flawed in a lot of ways.

You could have made the same argument about pearl harbour. Well the japanese only attacked pearl harbour on one day, so if the US had just ignored it everything would have been fine. And that would be complete nonsense. It's taken 11 years to tear apart al qaeda and they're still not gone, and their ideology, even if not their senior membership, is still resilient. Unlike the death of Stalin (korean war) or the death of Hitler, or Mussolini where everyone proclaimed they were going to continue the fight, and then immediately gave up, Al Qaeda was fully expecting bin laden to be killed, and is ready to carry on without him.

There's nothing silly about taking al qaeda seriously. Taking them seriously doesn't necessarily mean flinging hundreds of billions of dollars at the problem, but doing nothing is an invitation for them to cause chaos, and the more chaos they cause the more recruits they get and so on. Having bomb sniffing dogs in airports, making sure the area around airports is secure from anti aircraft missiles, and helping the government of afghanistan (whatever the hell that actually is), fight Al Qaeda is perfectly sensible. Groping 4 year olds and 94 year olds, and using ionizing radiation body scanners on everyone.... not so much.

Remember, they did try and blow up the WTC previous, with a car bomb. And failed. Whatever else they are, they are persistent bastards. Whether that means their focus will move to north africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, the middle east and Pakistan from the US for a while I have no idea.

It is tricky, in the way you meant, but not tricky in other ways. For example: the U.S. made airplanes even softer targets by disarming everyone else. They even took dull plastic knives off of airplanes, at least for a while!

You do not prevent someone from attacking or terrorizing a crowd of people by disarming all the other people in the crowd! That's not just misguided, it's downright stupid! Yet that is what our bonehead politicians did.

You don't stop violent attackers by preventing other people from defending themselves. That has been tried again and again for millennia, yet has never worked.

And contrary to popular belief (see one comment above), a bullet hole in the side of a modern airliner is no catastrophe. The air compressors are well able to handle such a situation, and a $2 can of insulating foam can seal the hole in a moment or two anyway.

Granted, there's nothing silly about taking terrorism seriously. But it must also be kept in perspective. As mentioned before, a typical American (even a frequent flyer) is far more likely to die from a lightning strike or a fall in the bathtub than become a victim of terrorists.

I think we agree that reasonable safety measures are in order, but that the current situation is ridiculously far from reasonable.

You could have made the same argument about pearl harbour. Well the japanese only attacked pearl harbour on one day, so if the US had just ignored it everything would have been fine.

Pearl Harbor was a little different, Fox News's rhetoric aside. Pearl Harbor was a coordinated attack by Japanese military planes on a U.S. naval base, a legitimate military target. The Japanese were conducting a war; they weren't walking into crowded discotheques and blowing themselves up. We were pretty mad that they gave us no warning, but how much warning did FDR give Hitler that we were landing on Normandy? (Answer: None, and in fact we even conducted decoy operations to confuse the enemy.) When a government sends over 300 planes, destroys hundreds of your planes and sinks eight battleships (not cheap, those), I don't think it really accounts as "a one-day attack" -- as opposed to the type of attack where the solution is to lock the cabin doors on your own planes.

It's taken 11 years to tear apart al qaeda and they're still not gone, and their ideology, even if not their senior membership, is still resilient.

That's tricky. Terrorists are looking for soft targets. If there's no security on aircraft, they'll attack aircraft. If their most 'dead americans per dollar' is in Iraq then they go to iraq, or afghanistan or whatever.

I think the empirical evidence suggests that terrorists are not looking for "soft targets" or "most dead Americans per dollar." If they were, they could walk a bomb on a bus, train, or into a shopping mall and probably kill close to as many or more people than on a plane -- with no fuss. Or, heck, walk a bomb into an airport outside the security zone and detonate there. Any of these things would probably lead to even more disruptive crazy security measures in the U.S., so even if their goal is to disrupt society instead of just killing people, they're failing miserably.

If there are indeed as many motivated terrorists out there as you suggest, and if they were really looking for soft targets, they must be pretty darn stupid.

But they *are* looking for ways to kill people.... You need security looking for bombs, and poison gas, you need to secure airports themselves against ground based lasers and rockets and so on (because god knows, if you can blind a pilot to crash a plane they'll try that).

If you really think that we need all that to protect airplanes, then get ready to militarize every square foot of the entire country, because if terrorists are actually looking for easy targets for bombs, poison gas, etc. -- there are tens of thousands of high population targets waiting on the ground which are completely unguarded.

And yet, we've seen nothing of substance since 9/11 except for a few idiots on planes that the TSA couldn't even catch.

So, empirical evidence suggests that at least one of your premises is false. Some possibilities: (1) the terrorists are just obsessed with planes and aren't actually looking for soft targets or maximum casualties, (2) most terrorists are too stupid or not motivated enough to just build a simple bomb on American soil (or transport one through porous borders, like, say, shipping containers), and blow it up in some easy place, and/or (3) the number of terrorists who are actually out there and capable of an attack is much, much smaller than we have been led to believe.

I don't really know what the reality is, but if there really is a large number of crazy terrorists out there wanting to kill as many Americans as possible, they don't need to get on planes to do it.

Remember, they did try and blow up the WTC previous, with a car bomb. And failed. Whatever else they are, they are persistent bastards.

I'm not sure you understand what "persistent" means. If they really were out there and wanted to kill people or disrupt the American way of life, they could easily do so at any of tens of thousands of locations where lots of people hang out every day.
Israel has had real problems with terrorists. England and Northern Ireland has had them with the IRA. I hope things like that never come to the U.S., but that's what things look like when you have real motivated terrorists willing to maximize casualties on any soft target... there's no evidence for the scenario you suggest.

A lot of your points about potential agendas are fine, but we're talking about the TSA here, and why it should be justified.

Especially in the middle east they're balancing the risk of sending an al qaeda terrorist to the US versus just handing him a gun and telling him to go shoot americans in Iraq. If the guy dies, you pick up his gun, hand it to someone else. Not very life effective, but cost effective.

Fine. What does this have to do with the TSA? If the cost of a plane ticket is enough to dissuade them from coming to the U.S. and blowing something up that's unprotected here, why do we need security to keep them off planes?

I don't really know what the reality is, but if there really is a large number of crazy terrorists out there wanting to kill as many Americans as possible, they don't need to get on planes to do it.

You pretty much made my argument. Their most effective method today is to go after americans in afghanistan, and to go after american 'puppets' (from their perspective) elsewhere.

I'm not sure how I made your argument. I'm talking about the subject of TFA, which is the TSA. Most of the discussion about TSA reform is about their primary b

Of course the US knew the japanese were going to attack at some point. One can argue the specifics of the Pearl Harbour attack itself, but there was no secret that Japan and the US were in clashing spheres of influence.

Al Qaeda declared war on the US ages ago. They were pissed about a lot of things not the least of which was the US liberating kuwait rather than Al Qaeda/affiliates. In that sense there was no secret to people paying attention to Al

"In fact, why don't you go over to your neighbors place and start rearranging their furniture to how you think it should be. "

Funny, in a way. This was almost exactly my own argument against invading Iraq. I heard a lot (and from women particularly!) "We should invade them even if they weren't involved in 9/11 because of the terrible way they treat women."

And my argument was: "What business is that of mine, or yours? It may be true by our standards, but how dare you make moral judgments for some other entire culture? What if they came and attacked us, because we don't make women wear burkhas? How would you feel then?"

Further:

"Karma is a bitch. I strongly urge you not to support war on the basis that you feel their culture is immoral. Right now, their women can only gain. YOU, on the other hand, have a lot to lose."

Ok. So lets look at some of the things the US has done that pissed off Al Qaeda.

Supporting israel. The existence at all of israel. That's a deliberate choice. If you disagree with it that's fine, and US politicians don't ever really present a choice to the american public to abandon israel (nor is it clear what would happen in that event, would the europeans step back up the plate, someone else, etc.). That Israeli US relationship does have its benefits as well. I'm not an american, not my value judgment to make.

The US honoured its recognition of the independence of Kuwait. Sure, it was basically about oil. But it's much more complicated than that. Kuwait was a sovereign recognized state. Allowing one country attack and annex another without UN authorization would be a disaster of a precedent. The US, as part of the world had a vested interest in that not happening (otherwise you get into problems with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Yemen, Oman, Eritrea, Brunei, Singapore, Panama, Belgium, Laos etc.etc. etc. ) . Nor would it have been good for anyone if the Iraqi's had invaded Saudi. But that's not the point. Al Qaeda and it's precursors and the US were completely in agreement on these points. What they disagreed on was that Al Qaeda thought it should be a bunch of islamic mujahadeen defending saudi from Iraq and liberating Kuwait. The saudi's wanted a plan that wasn't going to take 15 years, and nor did anyone else. The mistake I think, was telling al qaeda we'd pass on their participation at all. No one thought they'd take it so hard.

The US supports the House of Saud. Much like support for israel, there are pros and cons.

The US is rich. Sort of by definition when you have 25% of the worlds money you're going to influence everyone else. Hence the world trade centre as a target.

But the thing is.... you can't be benignly not in peoples business. You buy oil from Saudi, which implicitly supports the house of Saud. But if not, you refuse to buy oil you're also picking a side (and impoverishing the saudi people by cutting off their access to money). By opening trade with china and letting hundreds of billions of investment dollars flow there, you are implicitly (and explicitly in this case) recognizing their claim to be the legitimate government of china. It's utterly impractical to be isolationist in the world. But no matter who you do business with you'll make someone angry. Buying stuff from cheap chinese factories makes people mad that you're allowing workers to be mistreated, not having trade at all makes people mad you're trapping them in poverty. Demanding they have some sort of 'rights' and people complain you're getting in their business. You have to be used to the fact that there are enough people in the world no matter what you do, someone will be angry. The goal is then to have only bad or incompetent people mad at you. But well, it never works out that way.

And the thing is... when you stick your nose in peoples business for the better you don't hear huge swathes of people complaining. I'm sure the Libyans are thrilled you helped oust gaddahfi, the syrians fighting to overthrow assad would appreciate a hand etc.

Since we're on the topic of WW2 lets look at the ethiopia case from just prior to WW2. By refusing to supply arms to Ethiopia we basically handed them to the Italians. Had we gone the other route, and supplied arms to the Italians who knows, maybe the war would have started in 37 rather than 39, or maybe the Italians would have had to go home. You don't know. Action and non action are both impacting peoples lives. Especially in syria right now. You have a whole lot of choices in the spectrum of non action to anything the US could do, and inevitably, you have to pick something, because non action can make as many enemies as anything else.

I can also offer evidence for this. It is not proof of cause, but there is indisputable correlation:

The stronger our Federal Government has become, and the more it has tried to rule the country from On High and establish uniform National rules rather than let states decide for themselves, the worse our country has been economically. If you graph them on paper the similarity is uncanny; to a point that I think shocks most people.

The buying power of the dollar has been so closely -- but inversely -- rel

"Well international laws are merely ones that more than one nation has agreed to."

Well, I concede that international law does exist, but I assert that much of it has no teeth, and also that much of it probably should not exist.

For a good example, we need only look at the example we were already discussing: Iraq. And Afghanistan. There is little doubt that our invasion of Iraq was against international law. And there is little doubt that some of our more recent drone attacks, pretty much by definition, make Barack Obama, by International Law, a murderer and war criminal.

"The UN is just a glorified room for people to talk at each other, and a giant archive to file treaties multiple parties have agreed to."

I cannot agree with this. The UN, as a body, definitely has policies and agendas. They are even written out.

On the other hand, some of those policies and agendas are set informally by its high officers, and may not reflect the opinions of the members.

It has no deeper capability than it's member states...

AFAIAC, that is its only "saving grace".

What do you mean when you say the UN, at $415 million, is "practically free"? When we are paying it to be an enemy of the United States? (Some of their stated policies are against guaranteed Constitutional rights of

All undercover TSA agents and any armed pilots use ammunition specifically designed to not rupture the hull.

Nonsense. They carry regular jacketed hollowpoints, just like any other police officers, or civilians for that matter. A gunshot in a pressurized plane just pokes a small hole which the plane's normal pressure-maintenance systems can easily compensate for.

2) Assuming the window shatters rather than just holing (I don't know what would happen; it depends on the type of glass, though I suspect it's tempered like auto glass and wouldn't shatter) then you'd get a larger hole which the pressure maintenance system couldn't keep up with. The plane would lose pressure over the course of a minute or two, the oxygen masks would drop and the plane would have to lose altitude and divert to a nearby airfield.

1) Hole in aluminum shell, likely no big deal.2) Window will blow out, maybe sucking a person with it. Etc. Since air is limited in the backup system (1-2 minutes), it's a major emergency with a lot of risk.3) You hit crucial cables or conduits, such as hydraulic controls. Minor to "bye, bye, birdie."4) You ignite the fuel, either in the tan

FLxxx numbers are simply pressure altitude in hundreds of feet. In North America flight levels start at 18,000 feet so the lowest FL number is FL180. (In Europe it is much more complicated...) Below that level it is simply "altitude". A normal cruising altitude would be from FL300 to FL410 and may vary from that based on length of hop, specs of the aircraft, congestion, and weather. Not sure where you are going to find any quantity of aircraft cruising at FL180 and FL280 is definitely not "high".

Nice try, but UPS and Fedex are prohibited from providing standard mail service by Federal Law. Go ahead, try to get a quote for a letter to be delivered in 3-5 days from anyone other than USPS. Sure, they'll give a quote for 2 Day Air, but the same service from USPS certainly doesn't cost 'pennies'.

On top of that, USPS is basically funded now by delivering junk mail to your door on an almost-daily basis. They also sell contact information of people who file change of address forms, in addition to the barrage of advertisements they subject people who file the form online to.

Plus, the mail is not a societal problem, if the USPS was shut down all that would happen is I would have to throw out all that junk mail.

On an on-topic note: if security were handled by private agencies they would be subject to state & federal law. Airports with security firms that were doing things like making a woman breast-pump in front of others would be pressured to fire those firms. Instead we have TSA agents who act as if no law at all applies to them.

UPS and Fedex are prohibited from providing standard mail service by Federal Law... Plus, the mail is not a societal problem, if the USPS was shut down all that would happen is I would have to throw out all that junk mail.

I respectfully call bullshit on your bullshit
It may be the case that UPS and Fedex are prohibited from providing standard mail service (I do not know). However, as I understand it, USPS is certainly forced to deliver mail everywhere, not just the well-populated and juicy areas. If you live an urban area, UPS/Fedex will step in to substitute for USPS. However, if you live in a remote village, you may notice that your letters will then cost $20 to deliver.

Boogers -- my mod points just expired and you need someone to mod you up.

Anyway, here's another example. WA state used to have state run liquor stores and used the profit from those stores to fund state services, like fire departments and whatnot. Now, WA did have some of the higher booze prices in the nation, but we also don't have an income tax, so it used a "sin tax" in part as a way to make up the difference. The stores had a really nice selection too.

On June 1st, the first day of privatization, selection went in the toilet, and prices skyrocketed. Here's one example from page 6 of the price list for Red Breast Irish Whisky.

The state store price was $49.95 out the door.The state retail price was $39.11The wholesale price can be calculated (*): $25.66

Fred Meyer is currently selling Red Breast at a special price of $60 (reg is $65). This is pretax.Many voters favoring the initiative stupidly believed that "competition" was synonymous with "lower prices," but I-1183 included a provision that wholesalers would have to pay a 10% fee, and retailers a 17% fee, to make up for the loss to the state from losing the stores. The Office of Financial Management, as required by law, evaluated the law and concluded prices would rise. This summary was even in the voter's pamphlet, but if many slashdotters can't RTFA, most voters only watch TV and totally bought the notion that competition and lower costs go hand in hand -- they never read more than the title let alone the summary -- just voted like the ads told them to.

Anyhow, starting with a wholesale price then of $25.66, after the wholesale fee, it would be $28.23, and after the retail fee, $33.03. The reg shelf price at Fred Meyer is almost a 100% markup, and even the sale price is an 81% markup, to which the old state taxes are added, making the out-the-door price of the bottle of Red Breast, $75.13 (on sale) or $81.16 (reg price).

Now, certain store brand rotguts are perhaps 50 cents to a buck cheaper than rotgut carried by the state stores, but anything decent is at 25% more expensive and some things are substantially more, Red Breast being about 60% (reg price). Worse, the profit the state would have used to benefit all Washingtonians, is now largely exported. It has been partly replaced by the new fees, but surely an initiative will kill those in the future and it is at that point, a WA income tax would become more likely. I'd really rather just decide whether to "sin" and pay a sin tax, than to have an income tax shoved down my throat every year.

So, this is an example where privatization costs the public much more in the short run, AND increases the likelihood of an income tax, which will cost the public much more in the long run. But Costco will make gazillions so its all good right? Corporate socialism is the name of the game now.

Why, "corporate socialism" is perfectly possible. A corporation, after all, is a small dictatorial state; if given sufficient room to do whatever it wants, it can well delve into some form of paternalistic socialism if that's how the people running it are inclined. Ford is a pretty famous example of that, but there are plenty more [wikipedia.org].

The fundamental problem with this arrangement is the same as with any dictatorship with an "enlightened ruler" - it's run on the whim of a single person or a small group, and does not respond to the populace. Therefore, it can change its nature quite radically for no reasons whatsoever. Practice shows that such arrangements don't last long term.

That big psychological difference is only in the minds of people like Rand Paul. The screeners are, in most cases, the exact same people, and they're working the exact same crappy job with the exact same crappy supervisor. The signature on their paycheck doesn't matter in their mind, only in yours.

The key point, which is not addressed at all within the press release is whether the Govt. will subsidize private screening or not. This is important because if so, then the TSA will simply be subcontracted out to Halliburton or other firm, and waste, fraud, and abuse will only increase, more security theater = more screeners = more equipment = more profit!

If, instead, airport screening was funded by the airport or airlines themselves (yes, either way, the air traveler ultimately picks up the tab) then they'd have an incentive to maximize passenger throughput while minimizing cost. They would still want reasonable security measures for safety's sake and to keep insurance premiums low and lawsuits to a minimum.

If JFK Intl still insisted on Whole Body Imaging, pat downs, no fly lists, liquid bans, shoe removal, and all the other nonsense introduced over the past decade, they'd probably have to charge about $15 per passenger to cover the cost. Therefore LaGuardia may then see that by just relying on metal detectors, X-rays for carry-ons, and canine patrols, they could screen each passenger for about $2 each, while having fewer delays and fewer upset travelers.

The upshot in this hypothetical example is that passengers who are still worried about another 9/11 style attack can fly out of JFK and feel reassured that they'll be perfectly safe from terrorists and will gladly pay for the privilege of being strip-searched, irradiated, groped, and prodded in exchange for this reassurance. Those who'd rather not pay to be humiliated can fly out of LaGuardia instead. Even humoring the idea that they'd be twice as likely to die in a terrorist incident as those who opted for the "enhanced" screening at JFK. Or in other words, instead of 25,000,000:1 odds, they'd be facing 12,500,000:1 odds.

Would traffic out of these two airports remain largely unchanged, would travel dry up out of LaGuardia out of fear, or would traffic dry up at JFK due to invasive security theater. I'd place my bets on the third scenario. However, in a true Libertarian sense, whatever imbalance was created if any would be corrected in short order by one airport adopting the policies of the other which took away their business.

One big problem is that when privatizing many government functions they can turn out to be actually be more expensive. Ie, inefficient not-for-profit group versus inefficient for-profit group. And indeed after privatizing you still have the _same_ managers and employees and equipment and procedures and rules except that they will be even less accountable to the citizenry than before.

There are some people who have this irrational hatred of governments and who are actually happy to spend even more money to get rid of the government label but change nothing else. These are not fiscal conservatives since their goal is not to save money. I think much of the time they're just trying to get votes from people who don't know any better than to solve an actual problem.

For-profit companies can do a good job in many areas, especially areas that involve making money. However they very often fail in areas that are not for profit. They just can not be run and managed the same way.

so rather than regulations, we have to sue in order to get our rights respected. nevermind the fact that we will already have been groped and abused, and then have to sit through a lengthy trial of questionable outcome to get any satisfaction. yes, what a much better status quo (rolls eyes)

These are anti-government people. They honestly believe that all government is too big and needs to be shrunk down to nothing except the military. Even one mayor in a town of 100 people is too large for these kooks. They are willing to risk economic meltdowns if it causes governments to fail, witness the idiotic and irresponsible refusal to fix the debt ceiling.

1. get abused2. go through the litany of trying to get a lawyer to take your case, wait a long time to start a trial3. wait a long time during a trial, because you don't have anything better to do with your time and money4. maybe not get any satisfaction at all in the end, and now an expensive legal bill on top of your now public mockery of your misery, because you are outgunned in the courtroom by the corporation's legal goon squad

Yeah you can sue a private screener. You can't sue the government. Well, you can, but the government won't let you win the case, as happened recently. A man was thrown to the ground and severely injured, so he sued the TSA, and the TSA refused to turn-over the videos because of "national security". The man was forced to drop the case since the evidence was being withheld.

Private security weren't dicks usually because they were answerable to the airport authority for that airport, and they are want happy customers. So they'd keep the security people accountable.

That's the real problem with the TSA, other than their ineffectiveness, is they have no accountability. It is set up very well so that nobody is ever accountable for what they do. It doesn't have to be that way, not all government agencies are, but it is and that is a big problem.

September 9th, 2001, I have video of me running through Palm Beach International Airport, holding up my camcorder to the security guards as the metal detector starts beeping and I don't even slow down. All I say is that my plane is taking off in less than 10 minutes as I run by. Nobody did a thing.

That's the main problem here... the Federal government offered up "free" security services to airports, what else were they going to do? Now we seem to be stuck with the stellar service that is the TSA - government managed security theater.

The TSA wouldn't bother me so much if (a) it was just the airport and (b) they operated with professionalism. BUT in reality the TSA is expanding its operations to our streets, with random stops-and-searches along interstates (border states), bus stops, train stations, and publicly-open facilities like malls, unemployment centers, hotels, post offices, and most recently: Chicago parks.

As for (b) I have close to 1000 stories about the TSA groping women's breasts, men's penises, forced strip searches of elderly women, dumping urine or feces bags on the floor, forcing a woman to demo a breastpump (else they'd steal the ~$100 device), tackling a woman like she in a football game, holding a man in St. Louis because he was carrying ~$3000 in cash (not a crime), detaining a Senator because he opted-out of being groped & wanted to be scanned, forcing a woman to stand inside a glass jail for over an hour because she had milk for her child (which was then dumped & she missed her flight), and on and on and on.

correct, it's on the airline to worry about whether their planes are taken over or fall out of the sky. it's on the passenger to choose an airline that makes them feel safe. Note most skyscrapers aren't cost reduced crap like the Twin Towers were, you run a plane into say the Sears Tower and you'll ruin a perfectly serviceable jet aircraft.

Abstract here [benthamscience.com], and there is a downloadable.pdf file.

Not only was it confirmed by other researchers, but by examination of its microscopic composition they narrowed it down to a particular commercial brand, normally available only to government and the military.

They were designed to stop the impact of a 707 lost in the fog, not a 767 at full throttle. And the fuels was hotter and longer then design accounted for. And a 707 wouldn't impact at the speeds that happened.These number cam partly from the only know incident of impact - A military craft into the ESB.

The engineers design did take burning into account.

The design assumption was that the plane would be trying to avoid the building and the pilots would be coming down in an emergency. Not that it would be ramme

Sorry, your comment above where you say the steel can't "melt" is not only incorrect but missing the point (it doesn't have to melt to lose a lot of strength), and that abstract doesn't say what you suggest it says. Just because the dust ends up having properties similar to thermite (which is what is says) DOES NOT MEAN THERMITE WAS PLANTED IN THE BUILDING, it just means another unexpected thing that may have added to the flames. Since it was found as dust and not as a melted mass doesn't that rule out deliberate ignition anyway? That huge quantity of dust didn't ignite.While you don't know me from anyone and I've never published any papers I did work as a metallurgist in a steel rod rolling mill for a little while in the early 1990s and in an electricity generating company after that. I've seen a lot of steel lose strength as it heats up, both the obvious red hot stuff (rod rolling from 600mm thick to 5mm), in boilers (a bit cooler) and in a crude oil heater in an oil refinery (just hot enough to lose strength and split).

Now you make thermite with metal dust, which means any metal dust made any way (eg. huge building collapse) is superficially going to look similar and unfortunately going to behave a similar way in a fire (see also flour dust explosions). In the case of a building made of steel and aluminium with a lot of organic material (wood, paper, plastics) and you grind it all up with a huge collapse then it is no surprise that it ends up as the material described in the abstract and we can all be thankful that the dust did not ignite after the buildings fell or there would have been an even larger death toll. I did some stuff with powered metal in the late 1980s at University, and the really fine stuff has to be handled very carefully due to the fire and explosion risk. The titanium powder came packed inside two tins, with the outer tin filled with an inert gas. Something like that would make a bigger bang, or actual thermite would have melted a lot more than what actually happened, or if that dust ignited there would have been a huge fireball.Cherry picking key words appears to have led you to the wrong conclusion. There's conspiracy theorists that think a government is so powerful and omniceint that only an act of government can possibly hurt them. The real world doesn't work like that. Governments are made up of real fallible people, especially governments where Horse Judges are appointed to key positions.

What I get from that abstract is the sense that things could have been even worse. I do not see anything in it that implies that thermite was planted. Is there something in the entire paper that clearly implies that instead of just that the dust from a building made of steel and aluminium contains steel and aluminium? Have you read and understood the paper?

eh, the only reason some of the 9/11 were in the country is because government agencies were watching them to see what they would do. and so we saw.

really there needs to be an inquisition and some executions of some of OUR people for high treason regarding 9/11. Obama shot off his mouth about a full inquiry, but of course didn't do jack as he a mega-corprate bitch just like bush/cheney

>>>private screening companies where determined to be un-fixable after 9/11

By whom? George "duh" Bush?hahahahahahaahahahahahahahaha.We should just take those 8 years under Bush, admit that every decision he made was wrong, throw out those laws he signed (TSA, Patriot Act, Protect IP Act, DHS, etc) and start over.

Cockpit doors are no longer unsecured and citizens won't just stand idly by while someone tries to hijack the plane. The TSA is a useless organization that I don't believe should exist even if they weren't completely useless. I'd much rather take the minuscule risk of a terrorist attack than violate everyone's rights at airports.

I don't much mind if a private company profits on it. That's not a bad thing.

Just so long as the job gets done properly, it doesn't cost us more and we can fire a company that does it poorly. Because it's clear that's not something the government can manage.

BIG newspaper headlines, or lack thereof aside, how are you going to know they're doing a good job? Government monitoring for compliance... gee, might as well just leave it where it is. My problem is most of what they are doing is unproductive. All these scanners and pat-downs. Hire some smarter people, pay them better, promote those who do a good job when unannounced testing happens and they catch things.

Exactly; just take a look at the private for-profit prison industries.

If you have to have a government service, and there's no way to make it competitive, it simply makes more sense to have the government do it outright. There's no way to make the TSA's job competitive; it's not like there's 5 different airports right next to each other that you can choose from if you don't like the screeners at one airport. By having the government do it directly, it's more answerable to the people than a private company is. However, as in the case of the USPS, it does sometimes make a lot of sense to have the function done not by a government agency, but rather by a government-owned and managed corporation, so it's not subject to as much politicization. But for the TSA, I don't think that's such a good idea; it really should be more like the FBI or police departments.

By having the government do it directly, it's more answerable to the people than a private company is.

Ooooh, yeah, TSA is totally answerable to people!
Did you read the response to a "Please abolish TSA" petition that was signed by ~37,000 people? Response written by TSA director and not even pretending. I.e. it didn't say "We understand your concerns and are improving this and that", but instead basically said "We are awesome and here's our plan for deployment for the next 10 years!"

LOL, you think you're going to be able to choose among competing pat-down companies? You'll have as much choice as you have in your (privatized) electric company, your (privatized) trash service, and, I bet, your (privatized) cable company.

Privatization simply means your money is being funneled into the pockets of a company rather than government workers.

It really does not matter whether you would wish to fly out of those airports. They exist and they compete with the "one airport" you claim has no competition.

You listed airports in Yuma, Prescott and *Flagstaff* as being competition for Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix?

Sky Harbor Airport to Prescott's airport is a 107 mile drive into the mountains of central Arizona. Just shy of 2 hours in no traffic, and that assumes you don't live east or south of Sky Harbor, which I'd imagine close to 1/3rd of the populat

I fly around the world on a regular basis. There is one thing that every single foreign airport I have ever flown out of shares in common: a lack of security theater.

From Mumbai to Istanbul, Narita to that tiny little airport on the island next to Toronto, I never have to:

1. Take my shoes off2. Submit to a body scanner3. Suffer a pat-down4. Wait more than ten minutes to get through security

Flying within and out of the US is slower, more difficult, more humiliating, than flying through airports where terrorism is ACTUALLY a common threat. I am embarrassed every time a foreigner has to deal with my country's ridiculous soap opera of security, and simultaneously enraged when the outside world reminds me that, outside of the US, flying is a wonderfully pleasant experience from start to finish.

I don't really have a new or insightful point here other than to vent, to be honest. It's deeply frustrating to see the ludicrous amount of money we've spent on body scanners that are not only trivially fooled, but simultaneously don't catch anything actually dangerous a metal detector wouldn't have already caught and still require me to take my god damned mother fucking shoes off. Security is worse, yet somehow takes longer. I have to choose between a ridiculous body scan or an intrusive physical search in my own relatively safe country, but can travel in comfort everywhere else.

It's maddening. I avoid flying as much as possible literally because of the TSA. It's a sad state of affairs when a 12-hour train ride (which, mind you, costs MORE than a flight) is an attractive option to dealing with airport security.

It's maddening to the point that I supported Rand Paul's original initiative to ban/reform the TSA. Rand Paul is a lunatic, yet I dislike the TSA so much that he and I agreed on this one issue.

So now, it turns out, he doesn't want to do what he'd said at all. His proposal address NONE of the things that madden me so, and in many cases make them worse. Privatized security theater is no better than public security theater. The THEATER part is the problem, not the public or private part.

I'm shocked, shocked, I say, to learn that your planes around the world haven't been hijacked yet. I'm certain that the only reason they're not being hijacked left, right and center is that the US security screening system is also protecting the rest of the world. In fact, the service the TSA provides is so great that we should go all around the world and demand tribu...payment for our services.

I also fly around the world on a regular basis. Perhaps not as regular as you, but security theater is alive and well around the ENTIRE world:
Flew from US - Prague through Paris. Had to throw away the bottle of water given to me on the US plane when I landed in Paris.
Flew from Brazil to Dallas to Home. Was carrying a suitcase of electronic gear ( a timing system) The security theatre in Brazil was worried I might use the blunt end of the small tripod as a weapon (but the rest of the electronic gear was ok

Nothing speaks of liberty more than a shift from government agency to a private agency. Why waste taxpayers' money on TSA when we can spend double the tax money and get groped the same way by "private screeners"?

Nothing radical about privatizing stuff which should remain in the government, though run much better than it currently is, it's typical of the right side of the aisle.

What I worry about is when our safety is a matter of profit for someone, perhaps eyeing a new house or boat or something.

Sad how disfunctional goverhment has become since 1999. It's all about posturing and then getting as much for your campaign donors as you can get. Hard to believe we once had a pretty effective government, split between p

Really this is typical of the Paul fiefdom. They want smaller government, the claim to be libertarians, but then, as soon as he gets in office, he is the same borrow and spend politicians that have characterized republicans since Reagan(debt as percent of GDP went over 50% since WWII). Just like everyone else, he knows he needs public tax dollars to pay off his friends who funded his election. Both Pauls have said, and have acted, to make sure their friends get their share fo the federal purse.

So what is wrong with current situation. It is that the TSA is a symptom, not the cause. The cause is Homeland Security, a department, which this year is adding $3billion in deficient spending over what it has been adding all the years since Bush decided that bigger government was the way to go. If we want smaller government, Paul should be giving us legislation to get rid of the DHS, putting the duties into other departments. He should get rid of medicare part D. He should stop the department of education from doing anything but reference curriculum and grants for innovative local teaching ideas. This would be smaller government and real savings. But instead he will continue to attack workers and pretend to care about the people.

YOU need to wake up to the fact he wants to turn everything over to unregulated corporations.

Do we need a 3rd party? yes. heel a 4th and 5th party!That does not me we should blindly jump on board anyone who shows up as 3rd party. Since you are ignorant of who donate money to them, I don't think it's not too far of a stretch to say you are blindly jumping on his bandwagon simply because it's a new band wagon.

The question is: Have you rapped yourself so emotionally into the Paul's that you won't change your view in light of the new evidence?

1. it makes them immune to Freedom of Information laws, as they only apply to government and government agencies

2. eliminates the horrific waste of potential for profit and corporate welfare - it's never a good idea for a government to do something when they can pay corporations ten times as much to do a crappier job.

The TSA was created in the aftermath of 9/11 attacks, with the reasoning that failures in airport security were at partly to blame for those attacks succeeding. But the reason the hijackers succeeded (or partly succeeded in the case of United 93) was because they exploited existing assumptions about what airline hijackers do.

Prior to 9/11, the primary purposes of a hijacking were to gain publicity and to use the passengers and crew as hostages. The terrorists would issue demands (usually for release of prisoners allied with them), maybe force the pilot to fly the plane around from airport to airport. Maybe (but not often) they might pick out a passenger belonging to a group they hated (members of the US military, or Jews) and kill him. But overall, if everyone cooperated, they'd come out of it alive, albeit after some miserable days or weeks -- TWA Flight 847 [wikipedia.org] in 1985 being the archetypal example. This is the way the public perceived it, and it was the basis for official government policy: cooperate and negotiate, because the hostage are valuable to the terrorists. If the hostages are dead, the terrorists have nothing to bargain with, and the government has no reason not to go in with guns blazing.

Based on this, all the 9/11 attackers had to do was present the passengers and crew with a situation where the perceived risks of resisting were greater than the perceived risks of cooperating. Without the knowledge that their situation did not match the pattern and that cooperation would result in everybody being killed, a credible threat to the life of just one person would have been enough. The hijackers could have accomplished this with their bare hands by ganging up on a single vulnerable person (elderly or very young), holding him/her, and threatening to strangle them. No pilot was going to say "Go ahead, break the old lady's neck, the cops can arrest you when we land in LA." Having box cutters made things easier, but not having them (because airport security would have confiscated them) would not have stopped them.

The way people perceive the situation is different now, and indeed the perception changed during the hijackings, once the passengers aboard United 93 found out what what the hijackers actually intended. Now, a hijacking couldn't succeed unless the hijackers were heavily armed, because the assumption among everyone else would be that cooperation means dying.

My point here (sorry for the rambling) is that the assumption behind creating the TSA is "if we'd only had it on 9/11, the attacks would have been prevented", and that's not true. Likewise, if the 9/11 attacks were attempted using the same tactics today, they'd fail, TSA or no TSA.

This is Rand Paul, not Ron. Rand supports Mitt "Indefinite detention of Americans without trial" Romney for president, though he claims to be a supporter of liberty and the constitution. Here's to the new boss indeed.

Because remember this: when the government privatises critical services (and the TSA is most certainly deemed critical), the services still need to be "provided". With the extra overhead of making shareholders rich.

Because nothing will go wrong with private armies of people mandated to stop and search you...

- Sub cudgels for knives. Last thing I want is to get cut by some potentially diseased, random jackass who doesn't know how to properly handle a sharp. plus, a Louisville Slugger has a much greater range than a box knife.

Also, rubberize the interior of the passenger compartment to make cleanup a breeze.

No more security.Put the doors to the cockpit on the OUTSIDE of the plane.Give all passengers a large knife.

The plane WILL be going to its destination. guaranteed. any terrorists pop up in flight.. well. we have garbage bags.

Problem solved. Dirt cheap. And we can even reuse the knives.

Take off and landing is the only part the pilot plays now. Small matter of having remotely-flown jets if their hijacked. The plan becomes less clear, which results in a lot of spineless back-seaters not wanting to be responsible for the outcome of a decision, when you have someone claiming to have a bomb on board and want the jet diverted. Defy them, call their bluff and it goes off.. we won't hear the end of it for over a decade.

In addition:1. Remove the ability for the passenger compartment to talk to the pilots except for a single emergency button that informs the pilots that we need an immediate emergency landing at the nearest airport. Hijackers can't tell the pilot where to go and they can't even threaten to kill people to achieve that goal.

2. Upon emergency landing the plane is met at the gate by EMTs and police. Hijackers aren't given a chance to negotiate before police are expected to enter the passenger compartment. This makes it impossible for them to use hostages as a buffer against police entry. EMTs, of course, are in the much more likely case that the emergency is medical in nature.

3. Once the plane touches down for an emergency prevent it from starting back up unless initiated from an access panel requiring a physical key held by the airport or local police and a password in the middle of the passenger compartment requiring at least two officers to operate. This means that unless an authorized technician is allowed into the center of the passenger compartment the plane can't just be reloaded with a new pilot and take off after the hijackers have had a chance to talk to the police. They need to allow multiple actual police officers into the compartment to even get off the ground again.

Or, even better, just keep the locked cockpit door and make sure passengers understand that hijackers are more likely to kill you than let you go nowadays. This requires almost no changes to the plane...

No. Libertarians object to the government doing anything because it's necessarily based on initiating force. Non-initiation of force is the ideology, no government is the logical conclusion.

By advocating for a government run X, you are saying that you are willing to throw me in jail for not agreeing to fund X. Do you really expect anything positive to result from this paradigm? Should not all social interactions be voluntary?

"But how will we manage the roads without the government!?" - without the initiatio